Year of the Doodle: April 11th - 17th

It's time to tip-toe through another week of doodling!

Once again, my Thesaurus Brain needs to get its licks in on the word "umbrella".(I also have an Anagram Brain, which is great when playing Words With Friends, but not so great when one is driving in unfamiliar places and reads road signs in different ways.)

The word "rodeo" immediately made me think of my rodeo clown finger puppets: Clem, Sgt. Glum, and Hooper.(Hooper is the barrel man.)Rodeo clowns perform a very valuable service to the bull rider -- they distract the bull so that if the rider is down, he won't get gored. Every part of their outfit is designed to aid in this distraction -- the wacky colors and patterns, the swinging kerchiefs at their waists.

With these doodle challenges, I typically go with my initial, gut reaction. So when I read, "Shiny" my immediate response was my usual response when I see something shiny &/or pretty, and that is a slack-jawed, blank-stared, "Pretty... Shiny..." I thought of how I will tell anyone that I must've been a raccoon in a past life because of my infinity for the shiny and the pretty, and that pretty much locked in that I would illustrate a raccoon for this challenge. Adding to that is my memory of taking care of my parents' dog and house while they were gone. I was sleeping in their bed on a full moon night, and then was JOLTED awake by the sound of HANDS muckin' around with the skylight latch. HOLY CRAP, is it a burglar? No, it was a couple of !@#$ raccoons, attracted to the latch's gleaming in the moonlight. "Thanks, raccoons, that was so helpful!" said Megan's heart.

Going against what I just said in the last chunk of writing, my initial reaction to this prompt (a star at the end of a swoopy shape) was of a more pornographic nature. I could hear all the whispers of long-ago Sunday school teachers telling me not to go in that direction, so just this ONCE I complied.Came up with this guy instead, and you'll see why in a bit...

Continued the rabbit theme with this page.I often give my students hand-outs that include the letters of the alphabet and the numbers 0-9.I have them try to find the character using this familiar symbols, and to cartoon them.I used the 5 and the 1 from these sheets for this prompt, then used rub-on 8s and a sticker 6 to make more bunnies.

Ah, and here's the page that butted up against Star Bunny's which was the impetus for all my rabbit-themed responses. Rabbit ears brought up a memory that I decided to draw/ write about, and I used the bunny head that was on the page, and used that bunny to be a stand-in for "me" in the story. You can never go wrong with a few movement lines or a few flying drops of sweat to really get your point across, I ALWAYS SAY...

I wasn't sure how to force this last part of the page into my pre-existing rabbit construct, then BING! my Thesaurus Brain (mentioned earlier) found the missing link. Then the challenge became how to illustrate this... rabbit with head open and brains coming out (not really my style)... cut away of rabbit head smelling a flower and smells going to olfactory part of brain (way too literal and frankly OMG to "doodle"). So in the end I came up with a silly brain bunny, boinging into the space. This guy is SO NOT READY to have his mind opened.

Here's how the week looked as a spread!I'll do another Year of the Doodle post after another spread is complete -- thanks for stopping by!